About Me

Anthony Balducci, 60, studied journalism at Baruch College in Manhattan and earned a criminology degree at the University of Florida. His first book, a biography of film comedian Lloyd Hamilton, was published by McFarland in 2009. The Funny Parts, a book detailing the history of gags and routines, was published by McFarland in 2012.

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Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Chaplin's version of this routine was elegantly choreographed. Fields' version was uproariously performed. By comparison, Myers' version may come across as crass and overdone, but it still manages in its own way to amusingly elaborate on this longstanding premise.

Friday, April 13, 2012

A house tilting, and its occupants being tossed from one side of the house to the other, was first attributed to ghostly mischief in The Haunted House (1908).

It later lost its supernatural trappings and became the result of either natural disaster or simple slapstick anarchy.

Larry Semon in Lightning Love (1923)

Cliff Bowes in Welcome Danger! (1925)

The best known version of the routine was crafted by Charlie Chaplin for The Gold Rush (1925).

A more modern version of the routine was featured in Black Sheep (1996).

The idea of a Gold Rush-style cabin suspended high above ground, with no tilting at all involved, can be found in Red Skelton's I Dood It (1943).

Additional Note (published September 12, 2014): In You're in the Army Now (1941), a pair of inept army privates (Phil Silvers and Jimmy Durante) improperly operate a tank, causing the massive vehicle to drag a general's house to the edge of a cliff. The house teeters off the cliff in the exact way that Chaplin's cabin teetered off a cliff in The Gold Rush. Hal Erickson, author of Military Comedy Films, reported that Chaplin was so upset by the similarity of the scenes that he threatened to sue Warner Brothers for plagiarism.

A number of gags that appeared in Bugs Bunny cartoons can be traced to silent films. Take this gag for instance.

Director Chuck Jones artfully appropriated the gag from the most cartoony of all silent film comedians - Larry Semon. Look at the following clip, which was taken from a dubbed Italian-language print of Semon's The Sportsman (1921).

In Old Tin Sides (1927), Kewpie Ross undertook a routine originally performed by Harry Langdon in The Strong Man (1926). The routine, as introduced, involved Langdon struggling to carry an unconscious woman up a flight of stairs.

Unfortunately, the makers of Old Tin Sides did away with the tension and awkwardness that made the routine funny by replacing the unconscious woman with a sack of potatoes. But this was not the only significant difference between the old and new scenes. In The Strong Man, the camera was set up to capture Langdon's facial expressions. But this could hardly have been a concern when it came to Ross, who was not a comedian known for his expressiveness. Instead, the camera was set up at a distance and angle that prevented a clear and direct view of Ross' face. After all, subtle reactions had nothing to do with the main objective of this scene, which was to get Ross' character to back out of a window and fall two stories.

A number of comedians demonstrated how difficult it was to transport an unconscious woman home, but Jack Cooper proved in Taxi Dolls (1929) that handling an automaton in the likeness of a woman is just as tricky.